Centre for Research in Literature Linguistics and Culture

Commoning Beyond Growth
Workshop - Call for abstracts

The workshop will be held in Nottingham, UK: 5-7 June 2024.

The threat of ecosystem collapse and the threat of extinction of human life and large parts of non-human life force scholars to explore strategies of response. The commons and a variety of growth critiques are two strands of thought for radical socio-ecological transformation that have become increasingly influential over the last few decades. Both strands of thinking entail the potential to alleviate the existential crises of our times.

The commons can be understood as a social practice of governing material and immaterial resources that do not belong to the state or the market, but to a community of users, the commoners. These commoners create institutions to self-govern resources for the collective benefit through the collective ‘doing in common’, i.e. commoning. Scholarship on the commons emphasises the value of the commons as a potent and desirable alternative to capitalist economies based on extraction and exploitation (Ostrom 1990; Bollier 2003 and 2014; De Angelis 2017).

Growth critiques have also become a focal point in various academic disciplines, and increasingly in social and ecological movements (e.g. Krenak 2023). Growth critiques have operated, since the early 1970s, under a range of terminologies – including degrowth (Georgescu-Roegen 1971; Gorz 1980), prosperity without growth (Jackson, 2017), post-growth (Soper 2020; Jackson 2021), doughnut economics (Raworth), the circular economy (Stahel 2019), and eco-socialism (Foster 2000, Saito 2017). Debates have recently turned from making the case for the urgency of growth critique (Kallis et al. 2020) to discussing strategic pathways to organise a future beyond growth (Soper 2020; Hickel 2021; Schmelzer et al. 2022; Barlow et al. 2022; Göpel 2023). In May 2023, more than 20 European MEPs initiated a four-day conference, recognising on the highest political level the need to think Beyond Growth.

Over the last 2-3 decades literature in both fields (commoning and growth critique) has increased remarkably in size and relevance. Degrowth scholars typically point to commoning as a core value. Hickel (2021), Kallis (2018), and Schmelzer et al. (2022) argue that commoning constitutes a pathway and “central component of a degrowth economy” (Schmelzer et al. 2022, p. 217). Scholarship on commoning has so far largely abstained from explicitly engaging with growth critique. Recently, some scholars have made attempts to build bridges by bringing both concepts into dialogue with each other (Euler & Gauditz 2017; Helfrich & Bollier 2019; Great & Bollier 2020; Spanier et al. 2023; Euler 2019; Wittel & Korczynski 2023). However, a more systematic dialogue has not yet emerged.

It is high time for these bodies of literature but also for these movements to come together to develop a social force, see their shared direction and logic, and thereby increase their potential to initiate a transition to a post-capitalist world. Initiating a convergence of both fields is more than an academic exercise. This workshop will focus strongly on activism and explore pathways to increase their influence in the public sphere.

In the workshop, we will consider a range of questions concerning the relationship between growth critique and commoning, including but not restricted to:

Political philosophy/political economy.  What forms of theorising of commoning throw up greater opportunity for an engagement with growth critical theorising? For instance, what are the spaces for symbiosis between commoning and degrowth when commoning is understood through the lens of Ostrom (1990), compared to the spaces when commoning is understood through the lens of De Angelis (2017)?  Similarly, what forms of theorising of growth-critique offer an opportunity for a productive dialogue with theorising on commoning?

State regulation. Is the state needed to facilitate a transition toward commoning beyond growth?

Actors. If there are important limitations in what states can do, who will likely be the key actors in a (social) movement of commoning beyond growth? Are there key actors who may be important but whose voice is systematically marginalised - for instance, non-human species? Are the key actors likely to be oriented to the sphere of production, the sphere of consumption, the sphere of identity politics, or another sphere?

The sphere of production.  What are the opportunities and tensions regarding the possibility of a movement towards commoning beyond growth within the sphere of production?  Concretely, can production beyond growth be organised along principles of commoning?

The sphere of consumption. What are the opportunities and tensions regarding the possibility of a movement towards commoning beyond growth within the sphere of consumption?  Are producers or consumers the key parties to drive these movements?

The sphere of identity politics and geopolitics (the Global South). What are the opportunities and tensions regarding the possibility of a commoning beyond growth movement within identity politics and geopolitics?

The public sphere: How can we spread the message? How can we deliver commoning beyond growth with hope?

Keynote speakers: Massimo de Angelis, Kate Soper

The deadline for the submission of a 250-word abstract in the form of a provocation is 15 January 2024. Submit abstracts with a very short bio to andreas.wittel@ntu.ac.uk

Workshop Organisers

• Dr. Andreas Wittel (Nottingham Trent University)
• Fabian Maier (PhD scholar, University of Nottingham)
• Dr. Heather Alberro (Nottingham Trent University)
• Prof. Marek Korczynski (University of Nottingham)

References

• Barlow, Nathan, Livia Regen, Noemie Cadiou, Ekaterina Chertkovskaya, Max Hollweg, Christina Plank, Merle Schulken, and Verena Wolf, eds. Degrowth & Strategy: How to Bring about Social-Ecological Transformation: Mayfly Books, 2022.
• Bollier, David. Silent Theft: The Private Plunder of our Common Wealth. New York: Routledge, 2003.
• Bollier, David. Think Like a Commoner. Gabriola Island: New Society Publishers, 2014.
• Bollier, David and Silke Helfrich. Free, Fair and Alive. the Insurgent Power of the Commons New Society Publishers, 2019.
• De Angelis, Massimo. Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to Postcapitalism. London: Zed Books, 2017.
• Euler, Johannes. "The Commons: A Social Form that Allows for Degrowth and Sustainability." Capitalism Nature Socialism 30, no. 2 (2019): 158–175.
• Euler, Johannes and Leslie Gauditz. "Commons: Self-Organized Provisioning as Social Movements." In Degrowth in Movement(s): Exploring Pathways for Transformation, edited by Burkhart, Corinna Schmelzer, Matthias Treu, Nina, 128-142: Zero Books.
• Foster, John Bellamy. Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature NYU Press, 2000.
• Georgescu-Roegen, Nicholas. The Entropy Law and the Economic Process. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 1971.
• Gorz, André. Ecology as Politics. London: Pluto Press, 1980.
• Göpel, Maja. Rethinking our World: An invitation to rescue our future. Scribe UK, 2023.
• Grear, Anna and David Bollier, eds. The Great Awakening: New Modes of Life Amidst Capitalist Ruins: punctum books, 2020.
• Hickel, Jason. Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World. London: Penguin Books, 2021.
• Jackson, Tim. Post Growth: Life After Capitalism Polity, 2021.
• Jackson, Tim. Prosperity without Growth. Foundations for the Economy of Tomorrow. New York: Routledge, 2017.
• Kallis, Giorgos. Degrowth Agenda Publishing, 2018.
• Kallis, Giorgos, Vasilis Kostakis, Steffen Lange, Barbara Muraca, Susan Paulson, and Matthias Schmelzer. "Research on Degrowth." Annual Review of Environment and Resources 43, (2018): 291-316.
• Krenak, Ailton. Life is Not Useful. Cambridge: Polity, 2023.
• Raworth, Kate. Doughnut Economics Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017.
• Saito, Kohei. Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2017.
• Schmelzer, Matthias. "The Growth Paradigm: History, Hegemony, and the Contested Making of Economic Growthmanship." Ecological Economics 118, (2015): 262-271.
• Schmelzer, Matthias, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan. The Future of Degrowth Verso, 2022.
• Soper, Kate. Post-Growth Living: For an Alternative Hedonism Verso, 2020.
• Spanier, Julia, Leonie Guerrero Lara, and Giuseppe Feola. "A One-Sided Love Affair? on the Potential for a Coalition between Degrowth and Community-Supported Agriculture in Germany." Agriculture and Human Values (2023).
• Stahel, Walter. The Circular Economy: A User's Guide. London: Routledge, 2019.
• Wittel, Andreas and Marek Korczynski. "After-Progress: Commoning in Degrowth ." The Commoner (2023).

• Heather Alberro, ‘“The Great Refusal”: Radical Environmental Resistance Against Contemporary Ecological Breakdown’ in Elisa Orofino & William Allchorn (eds), The Routledge Handbook on Non-Violent Extremism (London: Routledge, 2023)
• Natalie Braber, Harriet Smith & Jeremy Robson, ‘Assessing the Specificity and Accuracy of Accent Judgments by Lay Listeners‘,Language and Speech 66:2 (2023)
• Sarah Jackson, Literature and the Telephone: Conversations on Poetics, Politics and Place (London: Bloomsbury, 2023)
• Stephanie Palmer, Myrto Drizou, and Cecile Roudeau (eds), New Perspectives on Mary E. Wilkins Freeman: Reading with and against the Grain (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, (forthcoming 2023)
• Andrew Thacker & Tim Satterthwaite (eds), Magazines and Modern Identities: Global Cultures of the Illustrated Press (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).
• Andreas Wittel and Bachmann, ‘Solidarity in the digital commons’, in Kerstin Schmidt & Joost Van Loon, Herausforderung Solidarität: Konzepte - Kontroversen – Perspektiven (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2023).

• Elif Akçalı, Cüneyt Çakırlar, Özlem Güçlü, Mustang: Translating Willful Youth (London: Routledge, 2022).
• Heather Alberro, ‘H.G Wells, Earthly and Post-Terrestrial Futures’. Futures, 140 (2022)
• Ellie Byrne, Liam Connell & Philip Leonard, Troubling Globalisation, Parallax 27:1 (2021)
• Laura Coffey-Glover & Jai Mackenzie, ‘Balancing family time with fighting villains: Gender, agency and social action in the representation of Disney heroes’, Gender and Language 16:4 (2022)
• Nicole Thiara, ‘The Caste of Nature: Wholesome Bodies and Parasites in Bimal Roy’s Sujata and Gogu Shyamala’s “A Beauteous Light”, in The Routledge Companion to Caste and Cinema in India, eds. Judith Misrahi-Barak and Joshil K. Abraham (Routledge, 2022)
• Rory Waterman, ‘Walter de la Mare, W. H. Davies, and Georgian poetry’, in Yui Kajita, Angela Leighton and A.J. Nickerson (eds), Walter de la Mare: critical appraisals. (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2022)
• Jamie Williams & David Wright, ‘Ambiguity, responsibility and political action in the UK daily COVID-19 briefings’, Critical Discourse Studies 20 (2023)
• David Wright, Jeremy Robson, Helen Murray-Edwards & Natalie Braber, ‘The pragmatic functions of ‘respect’ in lawyers' courtroom discourse: A case study of Brexit hearings’, Journal of Pragmatics 187 (2022)

• Anna Ball, Forced Migration in the Feminist Imagination: Transcultural Movements (London: Routledge, 2021)
• Sarah Carter, Early Modern Intertextuality (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021)
• Annalise Grice, D. H. Lawrence and the Literary Marketplace (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
• Annalise Grice, ‘It is astonishing how little literature has to show of the life of the poor: Ford Madox Ford’s English Review and D. H. Lawrence’s Early Fiction’, in The Modern Short Story and Magazine Culture eds. Elke D’hoker and Chris Mourant (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2021)
• Sarah Jackson, ‘Calling without calling: Barghouti, Derrida and “the international day of telephones”’, Textual Practice, (2021)
• Peter Smith, ‘“Blood and soil”: Richard II and the politics of landscape’, in: Michael Davies & Andrew Duxfield (eds), Richard II: A Critical Reader (London: Bloomsbury Arden, 2022)
• Andrew Thacker, ‘“Also I do like the moderns”” Reading Jean Rhys’s Reading’, in Juliana Lopoukhine, Frédéric Regard & Kerry-Jane Wallert, Transnational Jean Rhys: Lines of Transmission, Lines of Flight (London: Bloomsbury, 2021)
• Rory Waterman, WH Davis: Essays on the Super-Tramp Poet (London: Anthem Press, 2021)
• Rory Waterman, Wendy Cope (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2021)
• Rory Waterman & Anthony Caleshu (eds), Poetry and Covid-19: An Anthology of Contemporary International and Collaborative Poetry (Swindon: Shearsman Press, 2021)
• Robbie Love & David Wright, ‘Specifying challenges in transcribing covert recordings: implications for forensic transcription’, Frontiers in Communication 6 (2021)